20 minutes is the perfect time for a round IMO. It's enough time to facilitate a comeback for an initially losing team, but not so long that it prevents the players from getting a good selection of maps during their playtime.

I'm going to say this again, since this question is probably about your server: I strongly recommend running an Official server at a 64 player count, even for CQS. 48 players is great, but experience has taught me that matches rarely actually stay at the full 24v24; instead, usually staying at 18v24 or 15v15 most of the time. This is even more true at this point in the game's life cycle.

Hate Mail

"you obviously don't know what an argument is as there is only one person battling. Do you really fucking think I want subs? You think you can act all big and powerful just because you sit on a computer at least 6 hours a day like the probably nerdy unwanted retard you are with 4.3k subs? You think 4.3k subs is a lot? LOL you need medicine man. I don't want any subs as i just have a google account for other media and writing comments. Think twice before you act. You even said in your video you aren't that great of a player, and the comments agree you aren't. Maybe you should once again think twice before you act, stop being such an annoying, ignorant bastard that everyone wants to shut up, and god, literally, just shut up. Your voice gave me a headache :sï»¿"

"As a youtuber shouldn't be trying to be reeling in your viewers with exciting stuff being said not your boring ass commentary for your video"

"The more you watch his vid the dumber he gets I swear he's borderline autistic look I got shot behind cover beacuase thin sheets metal are unpenetrable. Bf4 is just as quiet and tactical as bf3 random explosion in the background . Player has dissconected from chat
You started playing bf3 and never touched bfc1/2. Please do yourself a favor and shutdown your generic cod channel down"

"I don't see why he [MarbleDuck] always tries to shit on levelcap he is better and has a million more subs...and also "there isnt a best gun in she game there are guns that are better that others at different engagement distances" yes thats true and whichever is the best/most average at all of them is the "best gun""

"Marbleduck you don't know shit lol levelcap knows more than you do you cant talk about how someone puts up garbage when you do yourself your a newcomer to YouTube acting like you know shit step up in the food chain first then you have the right to talk otherwise your just a fish trying to compete with sharks"

"Why don't we just witness "LevelCap vs MarbleDuck" One on One both on Battlefield 3 and Battlefield 4 seen as there is so much Controversy about the Two Youtubers"

"stfu cunt, BF3 was way better end of discussion"

"Stfu man, you're be littleing the most looked upon Battlefield Youtuber. No one cares about you, how much of an ego you have, or quite frankly your opinion. It's a fucking game.... Does it really fucking matter? Pathetic man."

"fuck you asshole, dont talk shit about total"

"Wtf is your problem? You have no subs and he has millions, yet you pick on him like some kind of stubborn, ignorant, rude child born with a silver spoon is his mouth. It's easy to do that, for example... You said there was no background noise yet there is. You say you're a fairly good player, you're not."

I rented a server for about a week. The last two days I ran Operation Firestorm 2014 with fast vehicle respawn, 64 players and some simple rules. The server type was ranked. Yesterday evening the server was full. It stayed full for 4 or 5 rounds but then it started lagging and it went down to about 20 players. Here is a battle report from one of those rounds:

I do not know why it shows 33 players on each side, the record is definitely only 64 players plus a commander. This was the closest game, though most of the other rounds were pretty well balanced too. I did not swap a lot of players. My guess is it is the map in combination with the fast vehicle respawn, or maybe just luck.

Although Operation Firestorm 2014 is a great map, playing it several hours is pretty tough. Like I said: I am not a guy that plays a certain map, class or vehicle only. So I decided to try another setup. I created a map rotation that offers a wide variety of gameplay. This is what I came up with:

Game mode is Conquest (Small) on all maps. At the end of the day I prefer less players because that allows me to have a bigger impact on the outcome of the game. Most of the time playing on servers with 64 players is pretty frustrating for me.

As far as I can tell the intended player counts for the different amounts of flags are as follows:

By cutting the amount of players and flags in half the intensity stays the same as with 64 players but I can have a bigger impact (killing 16 players is easier than killing 32 players, haha). All the maps mentioned above have 3 flags in Conquest (Small) and in combination they offer everything one can ask for. Firestorm has all the classic vehicles except the MAA. Pearl Market is a great infantry map. Lancang Dam has IFVs and attack boats as well as the scout helicopter. Propaganda is another good infantry map but also has a tank in it. And last but not least: Hangar 21, I really love this map, mainly because of the flags A and B in the hangar. And the atmosphere is freaking awesome!

Like you said, the goal of this setup is to get "a good selection of maps during [...] [the] playtime". Right now the name of the server is "Conquest Marathon" and the description goes as follows:

"Come and spend your evening with us! Play on 5 carefully selected maps to experience everything Battlefield 4 has to offer in conquest mode."

I run two rounds with 400 tickets each per map, which results in 2.5 to 3 hours of gameplay. I had it set to one round before but liked the idea of teams interchanging deployments, just in case a map gives one team an advantage. In retrospect, I think it does not really matter because the teams seem to scramble at the end of every round anyway.

Is correct. So for example if you like to spend 20 minutes on a map, would you rather play two rounds of 10 minutes or one round of 20 minutes? I hope it is clear now. English is not my mother tongue so in case it reads weirdly, I apologize.

Is correct. So for example if you like to spend 20 minutes on a map, would you rather play two rounds of 10 minutes or one round of 20 minutes? I hope it is clear now. English is not my mother tongue so in case it reads weirdly, I apologize.

rented a server for about a week. The last two days I ran Operation Firestorm 2014 with fast vehicle respawn, 64 players and some simple rules. The server type was ranked. Yesterday evening the server was full. It stayed full for 4 or 5 rounds but then it started lagging and it went down to about 20 players

Are you EU or US? If the former, it's possible that the server ecosystem is very different from what it is here.

Hate Mail

"you obviously don't know what an argument is as there is only one person battling. Do you really fucking think I want subs? You think you can act all big and powerful just because you sit on a computer at least 6 hours a day like the probably nerdy unwanted retard you are with 4.3k subs? You think 4.3k subs is a lot? LOL you need medicine man. I don't want any subs as i just have a google account for other media and writing comments. Think twice before you act. You even said in your video you aren't that great of a player, and the comments agree you aren't. Maybe you should once again think twice before you act, stop being such an annoying, ignorant bastard that everyone wants to shut up, and god, literally, just shut up. Your voice gave me a headache :sï»¿"

"As a youtuber shouldn't be trying to be reeling in your viewers with exciting stuff being said not your boring ass commentary for your video"

"The more you watch his vid the dumber he gets I swear he's borderline autistic look I got shot behind cover beacuase thin sheets metal are unpenetrable. Bf4 is just as quiet and tactical as bf3 random explosion in the background . Player has dissconected from chat
You started playing bf3 and never touched bfc1/2. Please do yourself a favor and shutdown your generic cod channel down"

"I don't see why he [MarbleDuck] always tries to shit on levelcap he is better and has a million more subs...and also "there isnt a best gun in she game there are guns that are better that others at different engagement distances" yes thats true and whichever is the best/most average at all of them is the "best gun""

"Marbleduck you don't know shit lol levelcap knows more than you do you cant talk about how someone puts up garbage when you do yourself your a newcomer to YouTube acting like you know shit step up in the food chain first then you have the right to talk otherwise your just a fish trying to compete with sharks"

"Why don't we just witness "LevelCap vs MarbleDuck" One on One both on Battlefield 3 and Battlefield 4 seen as there is so much Controversy about the Two Youtubers"

"stfu cunt, BF3 was way better end of discussion"

"Stfu man, you're be littleing the most looked upon Battlefield Youtuber. No one cares about you, how much of an ego you have, or quite frankly your opinion. It's a fucking game.... Does it really fucking matter? Pathetic man."

"fuck you asshole, dont talk shit about total"

"Wtf is your problem? You have no subs and he has millions, yet you pick on him like some kind of stubborn, ignorant, rude child born with a silver spoon is his mouth. It's easy to do that, for example... You said there was no background noise yet there is. You say you're a fairly good player, you're not."

I am from the EU, more precisely Germany. I thought about renting a US server. New York was an option. This had more to do with traffic than possible performence differences, though. On the east coast I have ping of about 100, certainly not ideal but still playable. On a side note: Is there any way to find out which region has the most active players?

My second setup (mixed maps, Conquest [Small], 32 players) failed miserably. It attracted 9 players on a Friday evening. My map rotation started with Operation Firestorm 2014, as soon as it switched to the second map (Pearl Market) people started to leave. I changed the server type to "Official" and the experience to "Conquest Classics" but it looks like you can not tinker with the given map rotation at all. The type remains "Official" and so does the experience "Conquest Classics" but you will not have any traffic. Maybe I was just not patient enough, though. I guess offering something specific (like the first setup) is the way to go.

This post has been edited 2 times, last edit by "NoClue" (Oct 8th 2016, 2:12pm)